Danish and Chinese researchers have found a new appetite suppressant trick: it’s about looking at pictures of food… until you reach satiety.
Will we soon see a “Foodstagram diet” appear on social networks? It is in any case the “slimming technique” proposed by researchers from Aarhus University (in Denmark) and the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (in China): in a joint study, the scientists managed to show that it was enough to look at photos of food to cut the appetite…
The researchers gathered 400 volunteers whom they then divided into two groups: participants in group 1 had to look at the photo of a bowl of M&M’s three times, while participants in group 2 had to look at it thirty times.
Bypassing the brain to cause satiety
Verdict? At the end of the experiment, the researchers found that (unsurprisingly), the volunteers in group 1 wanted to eat more (M&M’s or other sweet confectionery) than the volunteers in group 2 – the latter, on the contrary, declared “not to be hungry anymore”. Moreover, the volunteers of group 2 felt less pleasure than those of group 1 at the idea of eating sweet confectionery.
How to explain this phenomenon ? For scientists, it would be a question of “short-circuiting” certain areas of the brain: “the same brain areas are mobilized when we eat or when we think we are eating” they explain.
Conclusion ? The next time you (very) want to raid the children’s sweets, try this appetite suppressant trick, validated by Danish and Chinese researchers: look at dozens of pictures of sweets on your phone, until you feel satiety… To be tested!
Source :Appetite